


And we throw our regrets to the Sea

by Arnica



Series: Holidays for the lost [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Holiday Fic Exchange, M/M, Other Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 09:31:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arnica/pseuds/Arnica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it still takes Ianto by surprise when he thinks about the fact that Jack is not from Earth. These stars, this moon, this sun...they're not the ones Jack grew up with. These holidays aren't Jack's holidays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And we throw our regrets to the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> I'm an idiot. I thought I put this up last year, but apparently not. So, here's last years Holiday exchange so that the one for this year makes sense.

The first time Jack asks him to watch the Hub alone overnight is just a few short months after Lisa. All day Tosh and Owen have been keeping eagle eyes on not just their watches but Jack. Jack who's been unusually quiet in his office, lost in thought every time Ianto has ducked inside the glass room, and sometime between Ianto removing the third untouched mug of coffee from Jack's desk and doctoring up a fourth mug with Kahlua, the Hub empties out completely. The fairy lights Gwen has wrapped around the railings of the walkways glint off the garland of tinsel she has draped around her now empty desk. Someone has even gone to the trouble of letting Myfanwy out before they snuck out of the Hub, most likely through the lift.

"So, you got the short straw this year?" Jack is smirking as he gestures for Ianto to sit. "Or did they all just sneak out on you? Feel free to drink that by the way. No coffee for me today. No booze either."

"Snuck out. Are you sick Jack?" That would be a shame, but the warm drink is delicious.

"No." There's a hint of a blush around the tips of Jack's ears. "I'm not sick. Look, I've got somewhere I have to be tonight, all night, and with it this close to Christmas and the invasion that inevitably comes I need someone here tonight to monitor the rift." Ianto can't tell if this is Jack just desperate enough to do whatever it is that has him glancing back and forth between his wrist strap and the knapsack by the door that he'll take anyone, or if this willingness to leave Ianto alone at the scene of his crime is the final bit of forgiveness the boy didn't realize he was still craving, but either way it isn't really a question.

"It's all the lights I reckon. We look like six billion idiots blinking out 'come and invade me' in red and green fairy lights once a year. Go on Jack, I've got things under control."

"Thanks." There's such genuine relief in the older man's eyes that it peaks Ianto's curiosity.

"Must be a hell of a date."

"Nope." The knapsack swings like it's heavy as Jack shoulders it quickly, ducking out the door, Ianto at his heels. "High Holy day. You can use my bed if you get too tired. Trust me, you hear the rift alarm just fine."

The sirens on the cog door are wailing as Jack shoulders it open, squeezing out as soon as the gap is wide enough. He's gone before Ianto bothers wondering exactly what kind of holiday the man is celebrating four days before Christmas. A quick spin on Google at Jack's desk turns up nothing for the twenty-first but Solstice. Ianto gives himself a few moments to ponder if the thought of Jack running naked through the Welsh woods in December, kissing crystals and hugging trees, is hilarious or really hot before putting the thought out of his head and settling back in Jack's chair to drink his coffee.

He doesn't think about it again, actually, until early the next morning when Jack stumbles, yawning, into the Hub and drops his coat on what should be an empty spot on the couch and is, instead, Ianto's face. The wool smells like the sea air and drops sand into his mouth and hair as Ianto comes awake flailing and spitting sand.

"Sorry about that!" Jack plucks the greatcoat off his head with a snicker. "Thought you'd be in the bed."

"Fell asleep watching movies." Ianto gestures to the Clerks menu with one hand, flipping sand out of his hair with the other. "So, how was your trip to the beach?"

"In December? Cold. Cold and exhausting. What are my chances of maybe a coffee?" Jack's hair is flopping in his face, roughened by what looks like seawater and there are smudges of black in his eyebrows and trapped in the bow of his upper lip.

"Pretty good. You might want to wash your face before everyone else gets in though." He stands and runs his thumb over the curve of Jack's lip, pulling back to show him the smudge of black that's been rubbed away. "It's still in your eyebrows. Coffee will be ready by the time you're out." Jack grins, kissing him quick and dirty before bounding off, taking the stairs two at a time up to his office. The smear of black on Ianto's thumb feels like charcoal soot and smells like driftwood and herbs. He wipes his thumb on the black sweat pants he was dozing in and heads for the kitchenette. If he hurries there's still time for a shower, maybe with Jack, before the rest of team is due to show up.

***

Jack doesn't mention needing anyone to cover the base the next year when the twenty-first comes around again. Not that anyone would have the time for it this year between juggling requests for permission from a luxury space cruiser that wants to not only cruise in high orbit for several hours as part of their itinerary, but to bring parties of rich alien tourists down to bloody London for _souvenir shopping_. They've been coordinating with UNIT and Parliament on the likelihood of another botched invasion (it's high), and making sure every government agency with anything approaching the correct security clearance is briefed on worst case scenarios and evacuation plans. In fact, it's Christmas Eve and he and Jack are on their way back from one last, unsuccessful, attempt to persuade the Queen to evacuate London before Ianto actually thinks about it and that's only because Jack, sitting in the passenger side of Ianto's car with his forehead pressed to the window, brings it up.

"How far from home do you think we are?" Jack's voice is low and frustrated, as if he already knows the answer and hates it.

"At this rate?" Traffic is a bitch, half of London seeming to decide that Christmas Eve is the perfect time to make their 'just-in-case' escapes and the M4 is little more than a car-park right now. They've been in Ianto's Nissan for over an hour and a half now and they're just passing the Reading exit. "Another two or three hours, easily."

"And then another two or so to get back out of Cardiff and up to Tenby if the traffic is the same in town." He thumps his forehead against the window. "It'll be past midnight ."

"And you need to be in _Tenby_ before midnight? What on Earth is in Tenby on Christmas Eve?"

"The beach. Sand and the ocean and space for fires." If he looks over, Ianto can see the reflection of Jack's half closed eyes in the glass.

"Is this that thing from last year? The night you needed me to watch the Hub, because I thought that was the twenty-first."

"The orbit was different back home. So was the rotational period, so it's not always the same day every year." He says it so casually that sometimes it still takes Ianto by surprise when he thinks about the fact that Jack is not from Earth. These stars, this moon, this _sun_...they're not the ones Jack grew up with. These holidays aren't Jack's holidays. It's not a hard decision to make.

"Well, is it Tenby particularly, or do you just need to get to the shore? I mean, I saw you put your knapsack in the trunk, is there anything at the Hub that you need?" He's already turning on the GPS and Clevedon looks like the closest small beach town. "Cause we're an hour and a half or so from Clevedon, less once we hit the M5 and I can put my foot down. Here," He ignores the reflection of Jack's face trying to compose itself and digs his cell out of his pocket. "Here, call around, make sure there's room at the inn."

There it is, that momentary blank look that says the jokes he grew up with don't immediately click for Jack before the older man snorts and grabs the phone.

"And if they only have stables and mangers?"

"Then I have a car with heated seats that _don't_ smell like livestock and a couple blankets in the trunk." There are Christmas carols playing when he flips the radio on, the traffic has swapped from a jerky stop and start to a slow crawl, and Jack isn't staring out the window anymore like his world is ending.

***

There are not, actually, any rooms available at ten-thirty at night on Christmas eve in a tourist town. They swing by an all night service station instead for snacks that Ianto doesn't even bother eating, parking the car and watching Jack disappear over the dunes before shoving his seat all the way back and curling up under one of the emergency blankets to catch up on some of the massive amounts of sleep he has missed this past week.

He doesn't even get an hour. At some point in his endless half asleep search for a position that keeps the steering wheel from digging black and blue trenches into his knee caps, Ianto has knocked the heat on high and he wakes up sweating, his hair sticking to him in damp curls.

"Ah, it's like fucking Hell in here!" The radio is playing the most god-awful version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing he's ever heard and Ianto turns it off with a groan, cracking the window and tipping his face up to the cool wet sea air.

The breeze is weak but there's still enough to carry a faint hint of a sound like a song on the air, rising and falling almost in counterpoint to the crash of the waves. The cadence is odd, rising and falling in rhythms Ianto can't predict, the snatches of words that make it to him slippery and strange, but the voice singing them is definitely Jack's.

Ianto toes off his shoes, and steps out onto the cold sand, blanket wrapped around his shoulders. The sky is a clear cold black, the stars bright and even if he knows that brightest one is actually an alien star ship parked in high orbit, it doesn't make it any less beautiful. There's a flicker or firelight from the right, drawing him down the beach among the cold dunes.

Jack has been busy. There's a huge semi-circle of driftwood burning hot and high, a smaller circle of white emergency candles flickering just inside the protection of the larger blaze. The highest wash of the tide licks just inches away from the ones closest to the water line. Heat is rolling off the fires in waves, warming Ianto as he settles under his blanket on the side of a dune, which is good because Jack must be freezing.

He's standing in the ocean in nothing but a pair of loose red pants that are wet to the thighs from the incoming waves, very carefully washing his arms in the frigid salt water, every so often cupping his hands and tipping his head back to spill the sea water down across his face and hair as he sings.

Ianto doesn't think about the future very often. Not his personal future, nor the future of the universe as a whole, but when he does he always imagines slick spires, gleaming under the strange light of double moons and different suns and never once does he consider religion in that context as anything other than a historical throwback by that time, something that would be outgrown, or unrecognizable to him as a man of his time. He does not think of the future as old fishing villages on the coast of 'a sandy little shit-hole' that's always under attack, where people stood in alien oceans under different stars than these, indulging in the very human urge to worship that humanity apparently does not, or cannot, breed out of itself.

Jack has stopped singing, the slippery lilting sounds cut off on a high note that rings out over the water. It's embarrassing, because Ianto is never this slow, but by the time it occurs to him that perhaps Jack won't appreciate turning around to find him camped on the lee of a sand-dune watching, it's already happened. Ianto can feel the blood creeping up his face and hopes Jack can't see it in the flickering fire light.

"You warm enough over there?" At least Jack sounds amused more than anything.

"Asks the mostly naked man in the ocean in December!" Hopefully it's the combination of moonlight and flickering shadows that make Jack look so pale and not the onset of hypothermia. The immortal man just grins and extends a hand.

"Come here." It's not really an option, even though Ianto knows that Jack wouldn't hold it against him if he declines, but Jack lets so few people in behind the charm and easy sensuality and it's hardly easier once you're there, that Ianto thinks he would be a fool not to go to him. Besides, it's barely weirder than the Christmas Eve he spent crammed into uncomfortable pews with Lisa at Mass and already far more interesting.

The smile on Jack's face makes moving from under his cozy blanket worth it. Particularly when Jack meets him above the water line, taking him by the hand and tugging him through the opening in the fire that faces the oncoming waves.

"Okay, just...like this." It's hot inside the blazing semi-circle, warm enough that Ianto lets Jack move and strip him like a doll until they kneel side by side on the sand in just their trousers, facing the sea.

It's easy to follow Jack's movements, mostly just the occasional small bow forward, arms outstretched past the candles with palms up so that the waves just lap at their fingertips, between every softly voiced verse that seems to change between touches of their hands to the sea. The flowing musical sounds change to incomprehensible words sometimes lovely and sometimes ridiculous, but it's not until well after Jack has swapped to English that Ianto recognizes what he's hearing.

"...Gerald Carter, Harriet Derbyshire, Angelo Colasanto, Thomas Brockless, Jack Harkness, Lucia Moretti, Alex Hopkins, Suzie Costello..."

Ianto is frozen in place, forehead pressed to the cool sand, crackling fire warming his bare back and fingers numb from the water continuing to brush their tips. Of all the things he imagined Jack could have been celebrating, if that's the word to use now, a day of the dead was not one of them. Even as part of his mind is aghast at the thought that Jack has possibly been listing his dead this entire time in more languages than Ianto ever thought he knew, his own lips are moving along, whispering his own far shorter list of departed to the ground under him.

The movement Jack makes when he sits back onto his heels is too quick and complex for Ianto to replicate, so he settles for crossing himself quickly with the conviction that it's the thought that counts. He's still watching Jack from the corner of his eye, waiting for his next cue, and there's a hint of a smile at the corner of the other man's mouth as he extends his arms, palms down, one at a time and waits to see if Ianto follows. They've flipped their arms from palms down to palms up and Jack is crossing his arms slowly, practically vibrating with glee, before the motions click in the back of Ianto's brain.

"This is the Macarena, you twat!" Jack collapses onto his side in a sniggering heap as Ianto shoves him.

"And you were so serious about it too!" The shove turns into a scuffle that leaves Jack spitting sand between his cackles and Ianto sitting on his back, jabbing at his ticklish spots.

"Your back is freezing Jack." It's only his fairly extensive experience in straddling Jack Harkness that keeps Ianto in place as the man under him rolls in a flurry of sand until Jack flops onto his back, grinning up at Ianto and fairly coated in sand.

"So are my balls, want to warm them up for me?"

"And if the Macarena wasn't a clue, should I assume the festivities are over?"

"Oh, I dunno, I could come up with a few fertility rites if you want. We didn't have any on the Boe, what with it being a sandy little shit-hole," He pokes Ianto in the chest as the younger man silently mouths the phrase in perfect unison. "But I could probably make up a pretty convincing one if you want."

"Haha. I'm not driving back to Cardiff with sand, _cold_ sand no less, in every single place I've never wanted sand, Jack."

"Why head back? Owen is on call tonight, we're halfway to either major site should we be needed, and there's still a prety good fire going." Jack is tugging playfully at Ianto's belt. "We've even got a perfectly good blanket abandoned by the dunes. Come on, when's the last time you had early morning Christmas sex on the beach? Ooh, you can call it my Christmas present!"

"You _have_ a present. It's waiting back in Cardiff in my closet." But he's not moving Jack's busy hands away from his now open belt and rapidly opening fly.

"Then I get two presents this year, don't I?"

He does.


End file.
